Five Senses
by Alipeeps
Summary: Everything about this era is unutterably alien to him.


Just a little "man out of his time" drabble that occurred to me.

* * *

Everything about this era is unutterably alien to him. Each day a battle to make sense of a world where everything is different. Lieutenant Mills is remarkably patient in her efforts to help him acclimatise but what she fails to realise is that it's not just the technology and the vocabulary and the social climate that are so different from his time... it's _everything_. Every single thing about this era is wholly unfamiliar to his senses.

_Sight..._

The lights are so bright. They hurt his eyes. They make colours garish and bold. Everything seems so much brighter now, so much harsher. No more the soft glow of candlight or oil lamp that filled a room as much with warmth as with light, no more the enticing shadows that danced with the flickering flame. No, these bright electric lights, these "fluorescent lights" as Lieutenant Mills called them, their light is cold and unforgiving, exposing every flaw and imperfection, leaving nothing to the imagination.

There isn't even truly a darkness anymore... the bright glowing lights of the 21st century reach everywhere, even to the heavens, obscuring the night sky with an orange glow that hides the stars from view.

_Sound..._

The noise is ceaseless. Everywhere he goes there is a roar of engines, the hum of electricity, music blaring, the chatter of the omnipresent televisions, coffee machines bubbling and hissing, unidentifiable beeps and noises from a thousand different obscure devices whose purposes he cannot begin to fathom. All the incredible machines on which this civilisation seems now to depend each add their own particular noise to the raucous chorus.

Even at night, there is no silence. Motorised vehicles still rumble through the streets, engines growling and horns blaring, snatches of music and chattering voices filter from the open doorways of brightly-lit establishments. The beeping, ringing, rumbling machines never sleep.

_Touch..._

There is no texture anymore. Everything seems to be made of this plastic with its artificially smooth surface. Everything is uniformly smooth and featureless, no imperfections, no tell-tale tool marks or signs of wear to tell of the craftsman who made it or the people who may have previously owned or used it.

_Taste..._

Everything tastes different. Food is too rich, too sweet, and the names of the ingredients are wholly unfamiliar to him. There is a quite bewildering array from which to choose, fruits and vegetables he's never heard of, spices and condiments from across the globe, dishes that bear no resemblance to any cut of meat he's ever heard of.

Even the foodstuffs he is familiar with have changed almost beyond recognition. Bread is stiff and dense in texture, each slice unnaturally uniform in shape and thickness. Meat is artificially bright in colour, cut and shaped and packaged, wrapped in the ever-present plastic. Even tea doesn't taste how it did and is no longer brewed in a pot, having been parcelled out into small paper bags.

_Smell..._

The smells are overwhelming, inescapable. On the street the acrid tang of fumes from the motorised vehicles stings the back of his throat, mixed with the scent of grease and cooked meats from the food merchants, the sharp smell of coffee from the omnipresent Starbucks. Inside the buildings the very air itself is processed, artificial, circulated from room to room by machinery he barely comprehends, stale with re-use.

It seems like every product in this century has been afforded its own artificial scent, from the soaps people use to launder their clothes to the unguents with which they cleanse their bodies. Sometimes just standing near to people is enough to make him feel like he will choke and he wonders if he will ever breath simple, clean, fresh air again.

It is not only the miasma of alien, unfamiliar smells which make him feel so lost, but also the lack of familiar smells. The scents of nature, the smell of horses and their dung, the ever-present tang of smoke in the air from candles and oil lamps, from campfires and hearth fires. It seems that fire, that most fundamental of man's tools since the early ages, has been superceded, rendered unnecessary by the advent of electricity.

In a way, it's a blessing that they are kept so busy either fighting the forces of evil or researching them, for he fears that if he were to have time to stop and truly dwell on the magnitude of his situation, he might very well lose his wits entirely.

* * *

_Fin._


End file.
